Discover New Berrima

Coal, rail and a new cement works

Coal movement shaped the works’ connection with Medway. A history reprinted by the Society describes a rail route linking the mine, cement works and main southern line, and records that pit ponies hauled coal underground until their retirement in 1968. Jim Galloway’s recollections add a family perspective on the early mining settlement. The article’s account of junction names was corrected in the following newsletter.^[17]

The names around the railway junction need care. In a correction published by the Society, railway historian David Kemmis distinguished the nearby Austermere stopping place, renamed Bong Bong in 1889, from Berrima Junction itself. He recorded that the junction briefly became Medway Junction in 1927 before reverting to Berrima Junction. His account corrects an earlier newsletter statement that had conflated the locations.^[16]

The materials and railway explain why the works developed here. Boral’s rehabilitation plan says the late-1920s site offered local shale, rail access to limestone from Marulan and coal from Medway. It records that shale was initially supplied from local quarries and that extraction on the works site began in 1934. Those supply routes and the people who worked along them connect New Berrima to the wider region.^[9]

A 1976 company publication in the Society’s collection says construction began in 1927 and the Berrima works officially opened on 24 May 1929. Boral records that the 1928 subdivision offered housing for employees. The village’s history includes families, homes and community life as well as industrial production; further resident recollections and school records would help tell that story.^[8][9]

A township for workers

Council records New Berrima as a private land development established in 1928; that November, 107 building lots and 69 business lots were sold. Its grid of ten streets developed separately from Berrima on higher ground. The New Berrima cement works opened in 1929 on the tramway between Berrima Colliery and the Main South Railway at Berrima Junction, linking the settlement to the shale, coal, limestone and rail economy.^[6][7]

The planned township was ambitious. A 1928 sale poster laid out streets beside the cement works, with 613 proposed lots. Drawing on James Jervis’s district history, Council’s planning document reports that 107 building lots and 69 business lots sold at the November auction. The plan captures a community being imagined alongside the new works.^[11][12]

Community life at the works

In an August 2019 Society newsletter, former cement-works engineer Ian Mackey recalled a company migrant hostel in Taylor Avenue opposite the works. He described rows of timber cabins, a dining room and the difficulties workers faced communicating in English. His recollection describes many postwar workers as Polish and says residents later brought family to Australia or married locally and moved to nearby towns. It is one participant’s retrospective account, rather than a complete history of the hostel.^[13]

Another account in the same issue traces the lives of Stephen and Eugenia Deneka, Polish forced labourers who met in wartime Germany and were separated. Adapted from a 1978 Blue Circle company magazine, it says Stephen came to Australia in 1949 and joined the Berrima cement works in 1952; decades later the couple found one another and reunited. The newsletter adds that they are buried in Bowral General Cemetery.^[14]

Sport connected the cement works and the surrounding community. In 2013 readers identified a photograph of the Southern Portland Cement first-grade cricket team, naming players including captain “Tarn” Wrightson. The Society also used the company’s 1959 newsletter to describe competition cricket and Sunday social matches, including a game between the works and Berrima Colliery. The photograph’s season was suggested as 1957-58 or 1959-60 rather than established conclusively. An unlikely later venture saw works staff build concrete canoes and train on the Wingecarribee River weir for a race at Narrabeen Lakes. Their company newsletter photographs show the crews putting the boats through their paces.^[15][18]

The Society holds a run of SPC and Blue Circle annual volumes from 1959 to 1985. They offer contemporary photographs and accounts of workplace and community life. They are company publications, so their perspective should be read alongside workers’ and residents’ memories, independent reporting and official records. Some scanned pages may not be searchable; browse the original volumes as well.^[8]